Traditionally, when transmitting from a satellite terminal to a ground station, multiple radio frequency bands used on the satellite terminal are transmitted by a separate transmitter terminal for each radio frequency band. For example, if the satellite terminal carries four radio frequency bands, the satellite terminal uses four different transmitters and four corresponding antennas. This increases the number of hardware components, including the number of transmitters and antennas for each frequency band, thus increasing the weight, mass and power consumption of the satellite payload. This also limits the data throughput, thus making the transmission system inefficient.
A single multi-wavelength optical tunable-based laser transmitter configured to deliver multiple radio frequency bands using a single laser beam may be beneficial.